Samuel Alito Believes That Christians Are Oppressed in America

That supposed persecution, Alito, Barr, and others have argued, is unmooring the U.S. from its cultural roots. “I’m reminded of an experience I had a number of years ago in a museum in Berlin,” Alito recounted. “One of the exhibits was a rustic wooden cross. A young and affluent woman, a well-dressed woman, and a young boy were looking at this exhibit, and the young boy turned to the woman, presumably his mother, and said ‘Who is that man?’ That memory has stuck in my mind as a harbinger of what may lie ahead for our culture.”

Some might have hesitated about drawing broad conclusions from a child’s idle question at a museum in another country. But Alito is nonetheless right that fewer Americans participate in organized religion today than their parents or grandparents did. “Polls show a significant increase in the percentage of the population that rejects religion, or thinks it’s just not all that important,” he claimed. “And this has a very important impact on religious liberty because it is hard to convince people that religious liberty is worth defending if they don’t think that religion is a good thing that deserves protection.”

Alito did not provide specific examples, perhaps because he did not want to risk commenting on potential cases that could reach the justices down the road. But he did offer a slightly ridiculous one to make his point. He described a courtroom with a rule against head coverings, in which three lawyers planned to appear. One of them is a devout fan of the Green Bay Packers. “His form of worship on Sunday morning is to bundle up, pack up his tailgating supplies, and head out for Lambeau Field, which for him is sacred ground,” Alito explained. “For 20 years he’s never missed a home game, he’s incurred frostbite, his wife grew tired of his obsession and left him, but nothing will stop him. The walls of his home are adorned with icons: There is an icon of Saint Vincent Lombardi, there is an icon of Saint Paul Hornung, Notre Dame class of 1956, and others.